IMS Awards Fellowship, Showcases Cross-Campus Collaborations

Cross-campus connections have long marked the relationship among the math departments of the Claremont Colleges.

That spirit of collaboration and connection was on display in late September—along with a fellowship that was given by a CGU alumnus—during a colloquium guest lecture held on the Pomona College campus.

Students and faculty from the 7Cs gathered in Pomona’s Argue Auditorium for a guest lecture given by University of California, Irvine, math professor Natalia Komarova. Komarova’s talk was preceded by the awarding of the Daniel Pick Fellowship, which was given to an Institute of Mathematical Sciences doctoral student who is conducting research in the area of molecular biology.

The recipient of the Pick fellowship is CGU doctoral student Christina Duron, who is working on statistical models to understand a form of pediatric brain cancer that affects the optic nerve in an effort to ultimately find ways to target the disease’s mechanisms.

The fellowship that was given by Daniel Pick (MS, Mathematics, ’95)—which includes a $10,000 award—was presented to Duron by IMS Director Maria Chugunova and Pomona College Professor Johanna Hardin. Pick also attended the award presentation.

A CGU math alumnus, Pick is a computational biologist and bioinformatician, with published research and software development spanning large-scale gene expression and other areas. He holds professional certifications in drug discovery and development from the University of California, San Diego, and has served as a Fulbright scholar at Tel Aviv University in computational fluid dynamics.

In addition to celebrating the Pick Fellowship, the IMS faculty also honored CMC Professor Chiu-Yen Kao with an award for her tireless support of four IMS doctoral students and the many other ways that she has been supportive in building and maintaining relationships among the math departments of the Claremont Colleges.

Before presenting the award to Kao, Chugunova read the award’s inscription, which praised Kao for her “dedicated service to graduate applied mathematics education and excellence in research.”